


Guardian Of

by physically_affectionate



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: AU, Adoption, M/M, reboot series - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-06-28
Updated: 2013-12-29
Packaged: 2017-12-16 11:04:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 20,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/861350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/physically_affectionate/pseuds/physically_affectionate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Leo is given the opportunity to regain custody of his ten year old daughter, there comes a price. He must get a guarantor, somebody to take joint custody of Joanna. And according to Ventaxian regulations, this person must be of the rank Captain or above.</p><p>And Leo isn't going to lose his daughter again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Guardian Of (Nothing)

**Author's Note:**

> Most of my Star Trek universe knowledge comes from Voyager, The Next Gen, Enterprise and some DS9, so there may be some time inaccuracies in this which I'm sorry for, even though I researched all of my main points. (I'm half way through tos though, whee!)
> 
> This is set after STIX, with a new ship (which I'm calling 1701 B) in the alternative universe. In regards to the ship, I'm talking more of a TNG ship, with the mess hall and schools, etc, but with a tos/aos technological style.

Although Leo understands Jocelyn’s reasons behind doing what she has done, but that doesn’t make him any less angry. The anger is radiating through his body; out to his fingers, bending his toes in his shoes. Hitting the social worker - if that is what the Ventaxians call it - would only reinforce the point that he has to prove incorrect. Leo isn’t violent, and he never has been; he’s a doctor for god’s sake. Hippocratic oath and all. Not only is it a blatant lie, but it’s a level of betrayal that Leo wouldn’t have expected from Jocelyn. The end of their marriage may have been a train wreck, but it wasn’t that much of a total fuck up. 

“I’m sorry,” the Ventaxian social worker says with a guarded sigh. The worker seems tired, and slightly green; Leo would recommend the man see a doctor if he was in a right state of mind, but now he’s just angry. Jocelyn had no right to even deny him visiting rights in the _first_ place, no matter move to a different planet without telling him and then having him pronounced violent under Ventaxian law.

But dammit, Leo has been spending too much time with those psychologists temporarily stationed on the Enterprise - to help deal with the aftermath of Khan tearing their lives apart like a child plays with dirt - because he can understand why she did it. And the part that makes it even worse, is the fact that he knows Jocelyn didn’t do it out of selfish anger after their divorce. No, Leo knows that she did it to protect her daughter from which she had ascertained was dangerous. In her position, he probably would have done the same. 

Dammit, those psychologists. They need to get out of his sickbay before he forcibly removed them; with or without the use of sedatives. 

“You can’t be granted custody with violence on your record. It’s simply against the law.” The Ventaxian pushes back into the depths of his chair with a grimace, arms folding over in protection. He must think that Leo is going to have a violent reaction to the news. The thought makes Leo’s body double over in ugly laughter. He all but snorts, not caring of the sight he must be creating. Jocelyn had taken his daughter once, and now she had made sure he’d never have his daughter again. 

“She told you that? And you believed her?” Leo manages to keep his voice steady, even after his outburst of laughter. His reactions must be confusing, but he can’t believe that the Ventaxian’s believed his ex-wife. All she ever had were words. If their was somebody in his marriage who was violent, it would have been Jocelyn; verbally violent. His sarcastic wit had never been a challenge for her dry tongue.

The Ventaxian is playing with his own fingers, knotting them up and then untying them. His legs are now ram-rod straight, as was his back. He’s nervous, Leo decides. It then occurs to Leo that he should find this man’s name for reference and then demand to talk to somebody else. Somebody in senior management who would say that everything was okay and he could take his daughter, or have the power to negotiate with him. 

“Can I rebut that?” Leo asks, his professional brain overriding his personal one. If he’s going to accomplish anything here, he needs to be logical about it. Maybe he should have accepted Spock’s offer to accompany him to the planet, but Leo couldn’t say yes to Spock and no to Jim. They were already both already suspicious - eyes taking long side glances trying to read around Leo’s body - when Leo had received a unmarked message from Ventax II requesting his immediate presence. It was sheer luck that the Enterprise was headed to that part of space; he was more likely to get four royal flushes and decent replicated peach cobbler. 

The Ventaxian is still nervously playing with his fingers, and now that Leo’s noticed it, it’s putting him on edge. When Leo looks down, he sees that his whole body is vibrating with nervous energy. He knows there will be some way to rebut or appeal against the claim - or truth in the eyes of the Ventaxians - but he already knows that it will come with a price. He’s a doctor, and he’s seen so many pay the price one way or another.

It turns out that Leo is correct in his feelings. He can rebut the claim, but for that to happen, he has to spend three earth months at a mental facility in the Ventaxian mountains. This is the only way, Leo finds out; records from Starfleet, although recognised, will not fill the bill. “They could be forged, or written by one of your friends from medical school and therefore biased,” the Ventaxian stated. 

In a move that Leo isn’t partially proud of, he actually spends the next hour arguing with the Ventaxian over the validity of Starfleet medical records; god dammit, he hates star fleet, those pretentious bastards, but their records are not biased or forged. 

~~~

After a rather aggressive but non-physical confrontation with four Ventaxian social workers, Leo finds himself leaving the room and making his way towards exit, wherever it is, to go to the place he’d agreed to meet Jim. 

The Ventaxians weren’t apart of the federation, but they were a peaceful people, and had granted commander Spock and five people admittance to the planet for some routine scans to add to the database. That _is_ the point of a five year exploration mission, and if Leo hadn’t known better at the time, he would have thought that Spock was happy about it - but of course Spock would be happy about it. It was strictly scientific and there would be no way for the captain to break regulation.

Now that Leo thought about it, Spock was actually quite happy for a pointy-eared bastard about the five-year observation mission with a new ship. Even if it made Jim so bored that he’d turn up in Leo’s quarters at night looking for something entertaining to fill his mind.

All Leo wants to do is meet his stupidly-insistant best friend at the meeting place and get back on the ship to his bourbon (enough that he’ll take the transporter with no hesitance) to drink enough to need Chapel to give him a hypospray the next morning. He does have 48 hours until he’ll lose his right to his daughter but spending at least 18 hours of that drunk sounds like a good plan, because as Leo sinks down a wall his back crashes into, he lets out a deep sound of, well, _of pain_ , of losing something that you were never allowed in the first place, of feeling a heart break, he knows he won’t be able to get Joanna. He doesn’t know any Ventaxians, and he knows that he wouldn’t be able to get any with an official standing to plea his case, or even suspend it.

Leo’s eyes are stinging, and it’s only when he goes to asses why it is - an allergic reaction to the composition of the atmosphere maybe - that he realises his face is wet, so he lets himself pull his legs in and wraps his arms around his body like a child would. Would Joanna be feeling like this now at the loss of her mother? It hits Leo that he should be grieving the loss of Jocelyn, but he has already grieved her loss; a hundred times over in signatures on a divorce, in angry words, in finding another man in their shared bed. If he can’t find a way to circumvent the Ventaxian laws, will Joanna be put into the system?

That thought is the final straw for Leo, knowing that he’s powerless to stop something like that just because of a single word on a record which wasn’t even confirmed. 

“I’m sorry,” a soft hand touches Leo’s shoulder, and Leo is forced to dig his head out to look at the stranger. Who would even know who he is here? The only people on the planet who know Leo are members of Starfleet, and Leo knows the voice (and medical records) of everybody who had stepped on that transporter pad with him, and this voice wasn’t familiar.

“I’m sorry,” the person says again, round pitch-blue eyes drooping. The stranger appears to be humanoid, but he isn’t human, Leo assesses if the heat eradicating into his skin from where they’re touching is anything to diagnose by. The hand curled around his shoulder is at least twice as warm as it should be; explains why the climate here is slightly colder than what Leo is used to. “I’m sorry for your inconvenience. I wish we didn’t have to contact you, but it was a part of the process. But I assure you, Joanna will remain with me happily. Thank you for cooperating without hassle.”

It hits Leo like an old fashioned train. This is Jocelyn’s husband, or the Ventaxian equilivant of a husband. Without his voice wavering, he speaks. This is the man who has been raising his Joanna; the one taking so many of the firsts which should have been Leo’s. “And who are you, darlin’?”

The stranger answers with no preamble; voice strong and words so perfectly pronounced that he must be using a translator. “Jared. I am Joanna’s father, or what you would call step-father.”

This is the point where Leo actually fucking loses it. He thinks that maybe if Jim was there, he’d be able to keep it together and remain a facet of the composed doctor that he is. Jim would know what to do or say, or if that failed, Jim would be able to restrain him. In the same way that Leo would flick hand over Jim’s body at night in his sleep when the younger man was having nightmares about all the deaths Khan produce - shivering sweat and whimpering into the darkness - Jim would touch his shoulder, and although his resolve would not dissolve, his anger would dissipate to something manageable. Jim would touch him without first seeking permission, and Bones would accept it without argument. But Jim isn’t here to help him, to keep him grounded, and this man - Jared - thinks that Leo is just going to give up on his daughter. Jared thinks that Leo doesn’t want his daughter; that Leo’s pain comes from having to deal with an annoying government process for something he doesn’t want. And the Ventaxian asshole thinks that he can just _touch_ Leo. 

It’s quite well known on the ship that one does not simply just touch the CMO. The CMO may touch others, but he may not be touched. Nobody really understands it, but apart from Jim, nobody questions it. (But Jim is a force of nature.) Leo’s skin is on fire where Jared is so casually touching him, and he just wants this man to stop touching him and give him back his daughter. 

Leo’s shoulder flicks over along with his arm, entrapping Jared’s arm, and Leo quickly makes his way to his feet. He is very aware of the fact that he could break Jared’s arm in at least four different ways - thank you Starfleet academy and those stupid hand to hand contact classes - but that’s probably not going to help him get his daughter. 

“Darlin’,” Leo starts, his accent way too pronounced in his attempt to control his anger, the grip on Jared’s arm increasing. “You’re not having my daughter. I’m not co-operating with you.”

Jared straightens up and tries to put some space between them, but he ends up just pulling at his arm in a way that makes him screw up his face, with heavy eyebrows digging in and lips screwing up. When he stops struggling and relaxed his arms, Jared brings his eyes up to meet Leo’s. Jared blinks slowly, and as they open, his lips pull into a smirk, and then steps in closer to Leo. Leo can feel the strange warmth again on his hip; when he looks down he sees the other man’s free hand pressing in. The touch, laced with threats and dark words, feels wrong, and not just because somebody is touching him. And this touch is anything but friendly. 

They’re touching all along the front now, and goddammit, Leo has no idea what’s going on. It’s a poor imitation of intimacy - possibly a mirror of the last days of his marriage with Jocelyn; them both pretending that living in the same house was okay, Jocelyn saying thank you for Leo making her coffee in the morning, Leo pretending not to notice the purple splotches on the side of his wife’s neck which he didn’t put there. For a second, he wonders if Jared is going to try and seduce him to give up parental rights over his daughter, because he can find no other explanation for the abrupt lack of personal space. Leo can feel Jared’s breath trailing along his cheek, and it’s warmer than it should be. It tastes bitter and different; Ventaxian’s must not exhale carbon dioxide then. Leo would make a note to put it in the Starfleet records, but his mind can’t get past the goosebumps along his hand and neck and how every single neuron receptor is on _fire_ because of somebody he’d never even met before. He doesn’t let Jim do this to him when they’re drunk on (illegal) Romulan ale, so why is he letting Jared do it?

Jared’s lips come up beside Leo’s ears, and he voice isn’t even as loud as a whisper. “No Ventaxian government official will sign for you.”

Leo pushes away from Jared, hands coming back through his own hair before he leans back against the wall again. Jared _is_ right, but if Leo has learnt nothing from living in space with Jim, it’s that there is always another way.

He pushes himself off the wall, barging through the door between himself and the Ventaxian officials. This room is large, with a few office desks - it’s not the room he was in earlier, this one is more open - and what looks like a canteen-like area at the back, and Leo can see at least five or six people at work with another four nursing cups in the back of the room. He walks how he walks in his sickbay, because he knows he needs to walk with the command that he can’t legitimately muster up. The man behind the desk looks startled, with pen midair and mouth open like halfway through a sentence. Two other Ventaxians have turned to face Leo too, their hands going still around their cups. 

“What if I take a guarantor of some kind - somebody to take partial responsibility?” As soon as Leo says it, he knows that he’s getting somewhere by the faces looking at him. They’re all looking as if they can find a way to circumvent what he’s saying; the family culture of this society seems to be so embedded that they won’t easily let one of their own go. “A senior member of Starfleet. Head nurse or head communication’s officer or the commanding officer - or maybe even the captain. That can’t be forged or biased.”

A murmur breaks out through the room, but Leo knows that he’s right. It’s written in the disapproving glances being passed from Ventaxian to Ventaxian. One turns to Leo and replies, without hesitance; the case must be familiar then, because they don’t require any extra information. “If you can prove that your guarantor is of legitimate status, they may take partial guardianship along with you.”

The fact that Leo can push this tiny rule to get custody of his daughter, as long as he can actually get a member of the senior staff to help him, means that when he meets Jim at the landing spot half an hour later, he’s not irritated. Jim is looking at Leo with unadorned confusion; Leo’s lips are pulled up slightly on one side, his accent isn’t as pronounced as he coos ahead to the landing party and his hands are deadly still. He can feel Jim’s eyes trace along the lines of his lips, down his hands, and they settle on his hips. Jim’s eyes are hot, oh so hot on his hips, and Leo wonders why because Jim may have had a fascination with parts of Leo’s body before but it had never been his hips. When Leo looks down, his top is pulled to show deep-red hand shaped prints in his skin; it must have been from the heat of Jared’s touch. When Leo meets Jim’s eyes again, Jim looks away, head bowing before moving his whole body towards Spock, as if Jim was uncomfortable, with hardening eyes and a twisted mouth. 

When Leo approaches, Jim doesn’t try to initiate contact - verbal or otherwise - against what Leo believed he would have done. The man hasn’t tried to hide his curiosity about the unmarked message or about why Leo needed to visit the planet so badly. But it isn’t the time to worry about Jim, so instead he approaches Uhura.

“Nyota darlin’,” he says, his right arm moving to briefly touch her wrist, against Spock’s murderous glance. “I need to see you and Chapel as soon as we return to the ship.”

Both Jim and Spock don’t appear happy with this.

~~~

Uhura and Chapel are waiting for Leo in his quarters as soon he has returned from his detour to sickbay. Leo realises that the fact that they’re already waiting in his quarters should worry him, but his hands are shaking with the PADDs he’s holding. 

After he checked in with M’Benga, he spent a few minutes downloading Ventaxian family law and the Starfleet regulations about children on starships, along with a few requisition forms, ready to talk either Uhura or Chapel into being his guarantor and take custody of Joanna until they can change it later. Upon considering Jim, Spock, Uhura and Chapel, Leo has decided that the two later are the best decisions. Jim, although his best friend, isn’t exactly a good choice, as he has a long history of impulsive decisions, and Leo isn’t sure that he wants Joanna’s second contact to be a man-child idiot who has an allergic reaction to everything. Leo loves Jim, he does, and he knows that Jim will be a large part of Joanna’s life as he’s a large part of Leo’s life, but he’s not stable- especially now. Leo is used to waking up with a phantom ghost; tear patterns on his spare pillow, sweat on his sheets, and the memory of Jim reciting the names of those who died floating through his dreams. Leo would groan at the names interrupting his slumber, throw a hand over Jim’s hip with groggy fingers until he calmed down and they could both let go for a few short hours.

So, for obvious reasons, Jim was off the list. 

Spock, although probably aware of all the latest techniques surrounding helping a child’s development, is Spock.

Both Uhura and Chapel have their appeals, but in the end, it comes down to their gender. Joanna had just lost a mother, but Leo was going to make sure that she still had a mother-figure in her life. He was well aware of the statistics showing that a girl growing up without a woman’s presence isn’t bad, but that doesn’t mean he’s going to put her in that situation. Dammit, he may be a doctor, but he doesn’t know where he’d start when the girl got her first period. 

So Leo had lists of why they should help him. But what he doesn’t consider is the fact that they think he’s joking.

“Leo,” Uhura starts softly, an arm coming to rest on his forearm as they all sat on the lounge, with a standard-issue coffee table in front of them containing all the PADDs. “Not once have you ever mentioned a daughter. Are you sure that you’re okay? Did you eat anything while you were on the planet? Maybe you’re hallucinating.”

That makes Leo double over in disgusting laugher. She thinks this is a joke, and Leo can understand why. He’d been so careful about making sure that Joanna’s existence was unknown on the ship. It wasn’t that Leo was ashamed of her, but he never wanted her existence to be used against him, the same way Jocelyn had. Joanna hurt; every day. Watching Jim beat himself up made Leo want to curl the other man up in his arms and explain how it hadn’t been his fault, and that he had actually saved so many lives. It hurts, in his heart, for reasons that Leo can’t explain. (It hurts because Jim matters to Leo, even if he still can’t put two words together to express it yet.) But Joanna hurts like a part of his heart has been taken - which it essentially had. Joanna had been a phantom limb for so long, and it was just less painful if nobody knew of her existence. Nobody would ask or say something by accident.

“I’m not. Her name is Joanna and she was born in 2249. Jocelyn - her mother, my ex-wife - recently died. You received the message from the planet Nyota, and like everybody else on the bridge, you wondered what it was about. It was just pure luck that we were here at the right time.” Leo hands her the PADD containing the original message. “See? It said that I had to make immediate contact because of her mother’s death, and that if I didn’t, I would formally forfeit my right to be her parent.” 

That’s not exactly what the PADD says, but it’s enough to gain the attention of Uhura and Chapel, as they pass it between them with concerned eyes. “This is amazing; why do you need us though?”

“I need one of you to take a joint guardianship with me. Firstly, because the Ventaxian’s won’t let me take her without a guarantor - and it can easily be fixed to just me once all records are transferred to Starfleet- but also because she’s just lost her mother. In some sense of the concept, I want her to have that kind of support from a human woman.” After this five year exploration mission is over, he can go home to Georgia, back to his grandmother and settle there, but he has accepted his commission, so he is here for five unfortunate years, deep in space. It’s lucky though, that they had the new Enterprise, with the other one back in the shop for repairs. This one is a bit larger, but it’s designed differently. It’s designed for people, with a larger mess hall and a gym and a school. When Leo had looked over the medical records of the new personnel joining the crew, he had noted that a large percentage of them were Starfleet married couples with children, or well, teachers. Leo is very aware of the fact that Jim hates it (“There is no room for passengers on this ship Bones. Or children. What if they all get chickenpox at the same time? I don’t want to be responsible for the lives of _children_.” “Kiddo, it’s a _spaceship_ not a _warship._ ”), and Leo himself only gives this design only a few years before it becomes discontinued. But if he was a religious man, he’d thank the gods for how this situation is turning out. 

“And really, all you actually have to do is come with me at 09:00 tomorrow and sign the forms with me. You won’t have any extra obligations on the ship.” Leo hands them both a PADD with the details he’d had sent after he left the Ventaxian office, outlining which members of Starfleet can act as his guarantor. “I need somebody of the senior staff for it to be recognised, and you’re the head nurse Chapel, and the head communications officer, Nyota.” 

Uhura exchanges a look with Chapel which makes his stomach drop. They’re going to say no, he can feel it, and he can’t understand why. Wouldn’t they want to help him get his daughter back? They’ve both highlighted something on their PADDs, the same part, Leo thinks, and dammit, those damned Ventaxians had put something in which was going to stop it like the guarantor has to be a relative, because they are so protective of their own - “We’re both honoured, we really are, but we’re not high enough. If you look-“

Chapel hands Leo a PADD and points to the highlighted part. 

*

 

There are moments in time where you know your life is going to change. You can pinpoint them, but they’re gone so quickly that you couldn’t even take a picture. For Leo, there had been a handful of these. Seeing a face framed by dark brown hair and deciding to follow it; deciding that it’s time to stop taking contraceptives; finding his father’s empty eyes and then not denying him _that_ hypospray; sitting down on that cargo ship instead of getting off it when he’d been forced out of the bathroom. In all of these moments, he had some sort of agency, but now, he has none. It’s horrifically terrifying to think that he is going to have to leave this decision to somebody else, one which will majorly infulence two lives but maybe it’s not his time. Because it’s the start of something that can never be stopped, and if Leo knew that it was the beginning of the end, who knows if he would have made the right decision? 

 

*

 

**The nominated guarantor must be of the rank Captain or above, according to the Starfleet command structure. There are no exceptions.**

Leo would like to make a few things very, very clear. This change, although makes him feel sick to his stomach, is not something he wants reflected on his friendship with Jim. Leo believes Jim to be a very capable young man and captain, but at the moment, mentally, is unfit. Not unfit in a way that influences his ability to command a ship, but in a way that means he’s unfit to have normal, emotionally stable friendships. He’s not stable enough to have a child’s development rest upon him personally. He can deal with the safety of every single person on the USS Enterprise NCC-1701 B, but when it becomes personal, he can’t. Leo knows that this is only a temporary state; Jim needs to work through his grief in a way befitting for a captain, but in Leo’s opinion, this will take time. And it will take time, because Jim can only work through it in those dark hours where he turns up in Leo’s bed. Because Leo is still proving that he’s not going to leave Jim, no matter what he has done or what he’s going to do. (The psychologist in Leo reckons that it doesn’t help that he was so close to death in the same was as his father before him, either. )

It’s not that Jim isn’t capable; he’s just not capable on a personal level. And even though as soon as all the paperwork goes through, Leo will make sure that he’s the only one with custody of his daughter - not making that mistake again - there is also the fact that within the confines of friendship and the senior officers off duty, it is well known that James T. Kirk does not like children. He doesn’t like the fact that they’re dependent and dead weight, that they use resources without contributing to the overall running of the ship and that they sometimes mess up shifts because they get sick and require their parent. But First and foremost, James T. Kirk does not like them on his ship. 

So really, there is a slight problem. 

When Jim appears at Leo’s quarters after an urgent message from Lt. Uhura, he finds Leo with his head buried in between his legs, and the arms of both Lt. Uhura and Nurse Chapel around his best friend. Leo isn’t aware of the other man’s presence until he feels the heavy press of a hand curling  along the back of his neck, slightly tying itself into his hair. This hand isn’t warm like Jared’s, and the touch isn’t unwanted. Leo pushes back into it, until eventually he’s sitting up, and the girls are withdrawing their arms and moving to stand up. Quietly, Leo gives his ‘thank you’s to each of the women personally by name and they offer their support through quick touches, but it’s obvious that they’re both lingering on where Jim is touching him, and how, awkwardly shifting from foot to foot. 

“Even you know her first name,” Jim starts, walking around the couch, carefully maintaining the contact keeping them both grounded in reality. “What’s the matter, Bones?”

There’s warmth curling around Leo’s knee, and the hand at his neck is now carding through his hair, tugging at the knots until the fingers can make a clean sweep, and it’s homing Leo into the moment. All he can feel is Jim, all he can sense is Jim. As if their friendship wasn’t fucked up enough - they were both aware that their level of physical intimacy was unusual, and although Jim is never there in the morning, they both know Jim was there. Neither of them talk about it, but they both know that it’s the loss of a different boundaries. Adding a child, even if it’s just temporary guardianship on Jim’s behalf, isn’t going to help. 

A finger is dragging around from the back of Leo’s neck, until it’s nudging his head up and to face Jim. Jim has moved in and they’re so close now that it is actually painful. It’s the moments like these when Leo wants to change the state of their relationship, but knows that Jim will never want it, even if Jim’s finger is now trailing down to wrap around Leo’s wrist. “What happened Bones? You’re scaring me, with being all smiley one moment and then you’re letting Uhura and Chapel openly touch you. Please tell me. Dammit, I’m a captain, not a mind reader.”

“I have a daughter, Joanna, and I haven’t been able to see her since I divorced Jocelyn.” Leo’s eyes focus on just how close Jim is, and how Jim’s breathing in what he’s breathing out. And Jim’s breathing it in, lungs pushing his chest forward, tongue flicking over in his open mouth. His tongue is running along his lips, and all Leo can do is watch. “And Jocelyn recently died.”

“I’m sorry,” Jim says, like he’s breathy. His tone suggests that the words are just words, which Leo knows they are. They’d both spent enough time in the academy getting Leo past his Jocelyn hangups, and Leo knows that Jim doesn’t hold a partially nice opinion of her.

“I’ve already grieved her death before.” And god, why does Jim think this is the time to bump his nose against Leo’s? Because now Leo can feel Jim’s breath on his god damned tongue, and it’s so horribly distracting that Leo doesn’t want to talk. The fingers around his waist are getting tighter, tighter, tighter, hotter. “But I can get custody of Joanna now, except they won’t let me, because Joce got it put on my Ventaxian record that I’m violent.”

“Dammit man, I’m a doctor, not violent,” Jim imitates in a pretty poor Georgian accent.

“A-and the only way I can get her back is if I get a senior member of Starfleet can be a guarantor for me, and take partial guardianship for a few weeks.”

The hand around Leo’s wrist goes restrictively tight before it lets go, Jim’s mouth closing abruptly before he stands and takes a step away from the couch. “Wait, Bones you have a _daughter_?”

This is the part which Leo was fearing, and this is the part which determines if Leo gets his daughter. His voice quickly shows his annoyance at the fact that the younger man wasn’t listening to him. “Dammit Jim, weren’t you listening? Yeah, and I need you to take partial guardianship for a few weeks.” 

Leo finds himself repeating the same points a few times, enough times that it could probably fill the empty space between them now. When it seems that they have spent ten minutes making sure that main points have been reinforced - my daughter, need help to get custody, Joanna, ten-going-on-eleven, tomorrow at 09:00 - Jim does something that Leo doesn’t expect. Leo is expecting some form of argument or confrontation, probably about the fact that he’d never mentioned a daughter before, but Jim, cold and stone faced, leaves Leo’s quarters without saying anything.

And Leo lets him.

Tomorrow morning, he’ll go and find the captain on duty, and ask in an official capacity - maybe talk to Spock first and find some relevant regulations - and get Jim to help him. Because maybe Jim will hate him for backing him into a corner by rules and regulation, for making him bring another child upon the ship, but one day he’ll understand. Maybe Jim will meet Joanna and she’ll be the exception, but it doesn’t matter, because Leo isn’t losing his daughter.

So Leo prepares a hangover hypospray for the morning, not even pandering to the idea of following Jim, and gets his nice bottle of bourbon out to ease his way to 07:00.


	2. Guardian Of (Joanna)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unbeta'ed. If you'd be interested, please contact me at physically-affectionate.tumblr.com, because I really need one.

Leo doesn’t even get to sleep until 07:00, because one of the new Orion crew members thinks it is a good idea to go and break her leg. It’s 04:48 when Leo gets comm’ed to the sickbay, and he’s grumpy, tired and just getting over his hangover, so when he steps into the sickbay he’s got a list of reasons why he didn’t need to be called.

1\. They may be green, but YOU ALL HAD TO STUDY THEIR PHYSIOLOGY AT MEDICAL SCHOOL SO WHAT’S YOUR GOD DAMNED PROBLEM? STOP BEING SO ANTHROPOCENTRIC.

Actually, that’s Leo’s _only_ point, but he is so sick and tired with how the human crew are reacting to their new Orion crew members. As CMO, he’s getting the rough edges of how the crew is mentally going through vague reports from the psychologists stationed on board, and it’s disgusting to see that the Orions are having problems simply because of their skin. If they were a different colour, they’d be virtually indistinguishable on the outside against the humans, and the fear man of the male crew mates are having about the pheromones are biased and down right idiotic. All of the Orion females have been cleared for duty amounts humans, and are taking the right pheromonic suppressants, so Leo really just wants to ask if they all went to their 21 st century history classes because the situation is so reminiscent of the old racism that it makes Leo quite angry.  

And Leo doesn’t need more of a reason to be angry at 04:56, 2 hours and 4 minutes before he’s scheduled to wake up and then have to convince his best friend to help him get custody of his daughter (probably through what is the Kirk equilivant of black mail - _regulations_ ) and then fight tooth’n’bone to get the paperwork pushed through in time before the Ventaxian’s pull out an obscure law to stop him. So a bunch of highly trained medical staff - whom Leo had picked for their professionalism - being anthropocentric just means trouble.

When he does step foot in the sickbay though, he isn’t exactly prepared for what he meets. All of the human females are lying on the ground clutching their heads, rolling from side to side as they let out whimpers of pain. One of the Denobulan males is on a biobed, spasming in his sleep, while the rest of the males are huddled in a corner. M’Benga is still in his scrubs, and there’s green blood staining his shirt, and when Leo spins back around, there’s the Orion crew member on the primary operating table with a bone still protruding out of her leg. But what’s mostly noticeable about the whole situation is how the density of room is different. When Leo lips his lips, he notices that it’s a lot sweeter than usual, so he flicks the density scanner on, calibrating it to go through the lights. The room lights up like a christmas tree, with the Orion crew member in the centre of a mist of vibrant green. 

There’s a large clattering noise followed by an animalistic sound, and it seems that M’Benga has moved to grab a surgical scalpel, wielding it like a weapon against the other medical staff members, and Leo can see the other man breathing in the green with every new breath, so Leo does what he needs to be done; he finds a breathing mask and then floods the compartment with anthesia, before calling the bridge to get sickbay sectioned off and all crew members who have had contact with the Orion to be quarantined until further notice. 

And it’s not even 05:00 yet.

 

* * *

 

 

It takes two hours for Leo to fix the Orion and detox his medical staff and the other patients in the sickbay. It turns out that even with the pheromonic suppressors, D’Nesh’s body was so distressed by the broken leg that the pheromones doubled in concentration and turned everybody nuts - a fact which had been well documented, if those idiots had read their material. It’s a self defence method, and a rather good one, because the women in the room had been indisposed and the men had been fighting each other whilst ignoring the presence of the injured Orio. Leo would probably laugh at the situation if it hadn’t disposed all of his medical staff on the day which he needs to be following the captain around. It really fucking sucks being CMO.

M’Benga seems to have noticed Leo’s nerves, after Leo asks the computer for the time again. “It’s 07:16 and in the last sixteen minutes, you’ve asked for the time eight times. What’s going on?”

Leo is nervous right down to his bones. He needs to get out of that sickbay and find Kirk, but he knows that he can’t. Even by regulation if he could, the doctor part of him couldn’t. The doctor part of him couldn’t leave all these recovering patients without somebody qualified around. He’s going to go on a right bender if these idiots meant that he lost custody of Joanna, but he’s also angry about the fact that he can’t contact Chapel. He knows that she’s off until 08:00 and he can’t exactly force her in because technically it’s not a medical emergency and he technically is available, but she knows what’s going on, and she did owe him a favour or two.  

As Leo lifts the quarantine - although the idiocy may still be infectious, the pheromones have dissipated to a safe level - he sits himself down in his chair, and asks for the time again. 

07:25. 

And this time when he calls for Chapel, she picks up. Her voice is muffled, like she’s trying hide her communicator in her sleeve or something, and Leo is picking up background sounds, involving a russian accent and a young girl’s squeals. So she must be with Chekov in the mess hall again, Leo determines, which would explain why she hadn’t picked up his previous comms. Leo can’t go to the mess hall for a few reasons: there are loud families, there are loud children, there are people on dates, there is no real alcohol, Jim is never there, it’s a breeding ground for infectious diseases and it has a direct view to the space outside. When he goes to the mess hall, all he can do is watch that window and imagine it breaking under the pressure to shatter into a million pieces and then let them all be dragged into the airless void which is space. 

“Leo?” she asks. 

“Your presence is required in sickbay, now, nurse Chapel,” Leo orders, ending his comm and then quickly running some scans over his patients again, before picking up some PADDs containing the regulations he planned to quote - against his own senses and against his friendship - to the captain. 

As soon as Chapel enters the sickbay, he informs her of the situation. She’s slightly breathy when she comes in, but she listens to every word he says with bright eyes and a dopey smile. It sets Leo on guard, but he can’t pinpoint _why_. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that he’s openly ordering her while she isn’t on duty - he’ll come back later and apologise, but now it’s easier to remove the element of choice and deal with the consequences later - and she’s accepting it without hesitance, and Chapel never _just_ accepts something. The thing about Chapel that Leo is quite fond of, is the fact that she never withholds her opinion, on or off duty, so he quickly scans her body to make sure that there’s nothing wrong; nothing is wrong, except for the unsanitary clumps of dirt on the bottom of her trousers.

After all relevant information and instructions have been relayed, including the ones about clean trousers, Leo’s curiosity gets the better of him. “Why was there dirt in the mess hall?” 

She raises an eyebrow. “What dirt sir?”

 

* * *

 

James T. Kirk is not on the bridge although it is the alpha shift, he is not in engineering or sickbay. He’s not in Leo’s quarters, and has the nerve to restrict computer access about his location so that even Leo’s medical command codes won’t work. 

James T. Kirk has locked Leonard McCoy out of his quarters and specifically told Spock to not interact with Leo unless it’s in an official capacity on official business. (Uhura had begged for Spock’s forgiveness with her eyes as Leo stormed out of the Bridge after a conflict with the Vulcan). 

Leo knows that Jim is a ball of fuck-ups and insecurities tied up with a cool exterior and a genius brain, but that doesn’t justify how deliberately and completely he has placed a barrier between them both. And goddammit, after this, Leo doesn’t know if the barrier can ever be removed.

He understands that he was going to do something deceitful and hurtful to Jim, but he wasn’t going to do it as Leo. He was going to do it as the CMO to the captain, and he was going to take responsibility for it. He knew it would have affected his personal friendship with Jim, because it would be the equivalent of stabbing his weak spots with a poker, but once he had Joanna, he would have all the time in the world to fix his friendship. At least five years on the same ship.

But this, refusing to help and then engaging a total communication black out - this is fucking unforgivable. And just because Jim personally doesn’t like children. It’s not the action of a captain _or_ a friend, and Leo is ready to make this known to Jim just as soon as he can find him. The thought makes his mouth taste bitter, his hands shake for a glass of bourbon and his mind to want to be back in Georgia riding horses where his best friend isn’t an unstable asshole. 

So Leo marches back to the bridge to find commander Spock on the comm. “-yes captain.”

“Vulan, if you don’t tell me where Jim is, this is about to get real personal, and I might not be able to do all that fancy stuff you can, and I might not be able to fight for as long as Jim can, but I can send you to Timbuktu and back in a way that even M’Benga won’t be able to help and Nyota will never forgive me for your inability to produce little Spocks.” Leo moves to invade Spock’s personal space, and it’s a real shame that Spock can’t show fear, because every other person on that bridge (except for Sulu, who seems to be quietly smug) has terror on their faces. Leo drops his voice to be as controlled as he can. “I’m having an emotion called anger, in case you didn’t notice.”

Spock turns to Uhura, not a shred of fear or discomfort showing on his face. “The doctor knows your first name. And the doctor is angry. Also, I am unaware of the geographical location or existence of a place called _timbuktu._ ”

Since M’Benga is the human expert on Vulcans, Leo hasn’t exactly brushed up as much on vulcan physiology as much as he ought to, but he’s still aware that a vulcan’s touch telepathy shouldn’t be as strong as it is showing between Spock and Uhura. For the second that she touches him - an indiscrete finger brushing along the length of his hand, his body immediately subduing to something also emotional - too much information seems to have passed between them; unless, of course, they’d taken place in Pon Farr, which is something that as CMO Leo would be required to know. But Uhura’s lips twitch upward for a second, like she’d won something, and then Spock gives Leo the exact coordinates of the Captain’s location.

As the door to the turbo lift whisks open, he’s ordering them both to the sickbay at 16:00. When 16:00 rolls around, Leo isn’t actually sure that he’s fit for duty; he watches Spock get embarrassed at Leo’s invasive questions with no reaction. He asks the questions in a dead tone, asking the bare amount of questions, and transcribes the answers with little effort. It’s making Spock and Uhura uncomfortable as they sit in his office under a privacy shied, but really, Leo doesn’t care that his own vulcan-like demeanour is making them uncomfortable.    

(The irony is that Spock, embarrassed, flushed to his ears and answering in a hushed tone, is more illogical than Leo.)

Leo’s just wondering how his life turned upside down in the course of nine hours, without any alcohol fuelled fights or any alien specie encounters.  He’s wondering how he gained a daughter and lost a best friend.

 

* * *

 

 

It’s 08:06 when Leo finds Jim. This time Jim’s quarters aren’t locked any more than they usually are; Leo knows Jim’s code but it’s not like he spends much time in there. Usually, they spend time in Leo’s room - probably something to do with the fact that between those four walls Jim is just Jim; not the captain with hundreds of people depending on him, not the son of an icon, nothing more than an impulsive boy with a stone heart. 

(It’s not a stone heart to Leo though, no, no. Maybe stone cold, but not a stone. It’s not open, but he was getting there, chipping at it and chipping at it and chipping at it.)

As soon as Leo approaches the door muttering it opens, which Leo regards as irregular. Doors only work like that - by voice only - if it’s personal quarters, and these are the captain’s quarters. They may be programmed to accept his codes immediately, but they aren’t programmed to open by voice print only.

But even the baffling door isn’t enough to dissuade Leo of his anger. It brings ‘seeing red’ to a new light for him, and he can basically taste his Georgian accent come back - he doesn’t want to give Jim the pleasure of that accent. (That accent got him laid once, but neither of them talk about it; Leo’s not actually sure that Jim even remembers it through the alcohol induced phase.)

He totally isn’t expecting to first crash into a red shirt talking in a thick scottish accent about interior designing. Where by crash he means stops so suddenly that he bounces back onto his heels, arms nearly flicking out to steady himself on the wall. Scotty seems to be muddling through a list of colours, not stopping until he’s forced to by a soft girlish squeal. 

The squeal pierces his ears; it’s not a sound he’s used to, but the voice is familiar. The voice reminds him of nights rocking a baby to sleep with worn eyes, but the squeal reminds him of something different. The last time Leo had heard that squeal was when his daughter had found a dog in their backyard - Leo can’t remember much, except for the fact that it was gentile and harmless - while Leo had followed a trail of abandoned clothes, one line familiar and the other not, broad brown shirts that don’t belong to him and mud-crusted jeans scrunched up on his couch, to find the end of his marriage. 

As Leo moves around Scotty, his eyes go no where near Jim. His eyes stick to the girl standing awkwardly, hands playing with each other and head slightly bowed. She’s older than Leo expected, dressed in a soft, long pink top and black leggings with ballet shoes, and her stark black hair is pulled back into a simple ponytail. She’s not looking at anything, and it takes a second before Leo can fully grab her attention. Her eyes flicker between fear and surprise as she looks between Scotty and himself, all of his psychological training coming straight back. He puts distance between himself and the scotsman, and Joanna must seem to recognise Leo enough because she immediately bolts to hide herself behind him.  

“Ah, lass, how about the colour of your bags?” Scotty asks, and Leo cocks his head in question. There are in fact two bags standing in the middle of the room, but Leo doesn’t know what they have to do with interior designing.

“Scotty, I’ll come down with some specifics, okay?” Jim says, drawing Leo’s attention to the crouching man occupying the space beside where Joanna had been a second ago. Jim’s dopey smile keeps Leo’s attention until Scotty is closing the door behind him and Leo can feel a tug at his top.

“Hi, you’re my dad, aren’t you?” Joanna asks, and Leo can’t actually find it in him to reply. His daughter - who has been denied to him for what felt like forever - his alive and real and pulling on his top for an answer, but what stumps Leo the most is that she recognised him. They’ve been in the same room for less than five minutes and she’s already hidden behind his legs in an act that is so childish that it makes his choke back tears. “I think you’re my dad. My real dad, not Jared- mum wanted me to call him dad but I didn’t. You look like the one in the photo with mum.” She’s reaching up to touch his face, fingers sliding along the side as she arches on her toes. “Except you have hair on your face in the holo.”

“Joanna-” and really there’s no point for Leo to try and contain his voice anymore, it just breaking until there are tears on his face. He’s running his hands over her hair, on her shoulders, until he’s crouching down to hug her. “Darlin’, you’re _here,_ and I thought I was never going to see you again.”

Her little eyes widen as moves around to be comfortably kneeling - not a position his body is used to, and dammit he’s getting too old for this type of shit - with a quiet voice. “Why? Uncle Jim said that —“

Joanna’s words bring Jim back into Leo’s focus again, and when his anger flares, it seems that it wasn’t a good idea. The stupid kid is just sitting in the middle of his quarters watching them with a smile that Leo wants to punch right off his block. He understands that he has got his daughter now and should just thank Jim, but every fibre in his body is telling him that that’s not how the cards are going to be played in this game. If anything, Leo is feeling more violated by Jim’s actions than if the man had been a coward. Leo supposes that Jim thinks he was doing his Bones a favour by removing the middle man, but now he just feels incompetent. If he first lost his daughter and then couldn’t get her back himself, how is he ever going to be a good parent? It hurts his pride too - it was a plan that he was supposed to spear head, and honestly, Leo doesn’t want to know what Jim did to get Joanna so easily without his signature and no substantial claim to access her from. He has been bested, by a man child who has already become ‘Uncle Jim’ and has gained some of his daughter’s trust. And right now, Leo doesn’t know if he wants Joanna to trust Jim.

Before he knows it, he’s pulling Jim into Jim’s bedroom, surprise written over both of their faces. The lights are on less than 50% but neither of them make any move to change it, because Leo’s hands make contact with Jim’s shoulders, pushing the captain into the wall. 

Jim hits the wall with a hiss, his eyes going dark before his lips perk up on the right. “Bones, if you were into that kinky shit you could have told me earlier. Really, I’ve tried everything.” 

“What the fuck do you think you’re doin’, kid?” Leo asks, pushing himself right in front of Jim, invading his (non-existent) personal space. He’s crowding Jim into the wall with hands either side the other boy’s head and a leg pushed up between his thighs, breathing heavily. 

“I was getting the lounge room converted into another bedroom -“ Jim’s voice hitching -“ for Joanna because your quarters are too small and I don’t need all this space. It’s not like I actually use it either.”

“No kid, what are you doing with my daughter?”

“Getting all the unnecessary details out of the way, so you can see your daughter.”

“I wanted your help, not you to do it for me.”

“Does it matter?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because I needed to deserve her; _I_ needed to get her back.”

“That’s stupid Bones. You have her back now.”

“Dammit Jim,” Leo says, his right hand smashing against the wall beside Jim’s head. “I know you have family issues, but you can’t just bribe your way into one.”

Even in the darkest hours of their friendship, Leo hadn’t touched Jim’s family issues. They’d been packaged up and placed somewhere where Leo couldn’t touch them. But just because he couldn’t touch them, it didn’t mean he didn’t know where they were. 

“You might be able to smile and slide your way into people’s bed like a centurian slug, but you have to earn your place in a family. You should know that Jim.”

Leo doesn’t mention Jim’s dead father and absent mother. He doesn’t mention the deceased brother in Jim’s medical record. Because he doesn’t need to. Jim knows. Jim always knows.

“That’s not fair Leonard,” Jim whispers, his face remaining calm. 

They both stop, Leo’s leg pushing in as Jim’s body pushes back, and it’s ironic that now Jim chooses to let himself respond to Leo. They’ve spent so much time ignoring this - drunken kisses and sleeping bodies tied together - undeniable chemistry and want for more, only for the shimmer in both of their eyes to acknowledge at at the end. 

And it’s the end for Leo, and he’s not sure why. Technically Jim hasn’t done anything bad, but Leo has never felt this betrayed. Even after all the nights Jim had ditched Leo for a pretty blonde at the bar, the hacking of class schedules, Jim forging fake orders for rest to get Leo out of Starfleet medical to sleep, picking up the pieces on the bar floor. None of it hurts as much as this does. 

Spock would tell Leo that he’s being illogical - he got Joanna in the end, so why does it matter how he got there. Or maybe Spock would think Leo was being logical - it’s probable that Jim has broken a dozen rules and regulations to get the girl, both Starfleet and Ventaxian ones.  

“Just because you brought her doesn’t mean you get a free pass to this family, Jim.”

And that’s it. That’s when the friendship of James T. Kirk and Leonard McCoy goes from dysfunctional to a non-existent clusterfuck. 

After that, Jim removes himself from Leo’s caging arms before walking back into the lounge room, and he squats down in front of Joanna.

“I’ll see you later, baby girl,” he says before he gives her a kiss on her forehead and walks out, without a look back to Leo. And god damned does Le know that he has fucked up.

 

* * *

 

It ends up being easier to not argue with Scotty about which quarters the new walls need to be placed in because every time they consult to computer as to where Leo’s quarters are, it highlights what Leo would call the captain’s quarters. Or well, the captain’s old quarters. The computer also shows that James T. Kirk is assigned to Leo’s old quarters. Leo even tries to pull the original schematics up to show where the captain’s quarters are against the CMO’s quarters because the schematics are assigned to rank rather than a specific person. 

It appears as if the original schematics are unavailable. Leo doesn’t even try to hide his annoyance.

So Joanna - perched on Leo’s back because the loud noises and rushing people of Engineering are scary and confronting to her - shyly offers a set of colours she likes, and later that day when Leo and Joanna return after dinner, they find that the lounge room has been cut into two rooms: a smaller, standard coloured lounge room and a bedroom with a single bed and cupboards. (Leo will also find three boxes of his belongings sitting on the double bed in what had been Jim’s room, his clothes already hanging neatly in the robe. Neatly, but alone.)

Joanna is quiet most of the time, simply watching Leo instead saying anything, and Leo doesn’t start much conversation because he doesn’t know what to say to a ten year old. He asks about what she likes, what she doesn’t like, school on Ventax II. She doesn’t like broccilli and she’s been learning to play an instrument similar to a terran piano, so Leo makes a mental note to look into getting one. She keeps her distance, not clinging to him like she did in engineering, but she does acknowledge his existence.  She calls him ‘dad’ and understands that he’s safe, even if he’s unknown. When she does talk, she asks about his job and what ‘Uncle Jim’ does and why everybody is wearing different colour shirts, but nothing deeply personal. 

Leo doesn’t ask her what it was like on Ventax II, if she misses her mother or even if she wanted to stay. He doesn’t want to know the answer. 

 

* * *

 

Since Leo is a doctor and all, the first thing on his list is to input all of Joanna’s medical records into the ship’s medical bay. He wishes he’d been able to get Joanna because then he could have contacted her primary physician to get her records, but now that the ship has departed orbit, Leo doesn’t feel like pushing it. He’s not going to ask Jim to go back, and even if he did, he doesn’t think he’d be able to actually get the information without the damned captain’s help, and Leo isn’t in the mood to ask. He’s still physically fuming from Jim’s actions, and as he steps into the sickbay with Joanna in tow, the whole medical staff visibly straightens. 

“As you were,” he says with his accent thick, before walking over to one of the more secluded and private bays. Usually it’s reserved for the treatment of officers only and it’s Leo’s personal treatment bay, set up so that he knows it like he knows the back of his hand. It’s where he prefers to operate when needed, and to see Jim when having an allergic reaction. (Really, one of the shelves in here is stocked to the brim with the things Jim isn’t allergic to. 

Leo turns around to pop Joanna on the bed, but when he turns to get her, she’s already sitting on it, and timidly smiling at Nurse Chapel across the bay. As Leo moves to grab a tricorder, Chapel perches herself on the bed beside Joanna. “How are you?”

Joanna doesn’t reply, instead blushing. She’s smiling though, and after a minute, the girl speaks. “Are you going to give the PADD to dad so he doesn’t have to run all the scans he said he would?”

Now that Leo actually looks, Chapel has two PADDs in her hand; one of Starfleet issue, and another which reminds Leo of the Ventaxian buildings. 

“It’s just finishing converting,” Chapel chirps to Joanna. “The format was very hard to decode; I had to get Lt. Uhura’s help with it.”

Joanna’s asking who Lt. Uhura is, and Leo’s looking down to look at Chapel’s new clean pants. “Did you go down to the planet with Ji- the captain?”

Chapel nods, and then hands both the PADDs to Leo. She leaves then, with a broad smile and a promise to Joanna to teach the girl how to do her hair, not looking even slightly uncomfortable from Leo’s burning eyes. He supposes he should give Jim some credit, but he still doesn’t know if he wants to. 

 

* * *

 

Leo can’t fucking believe that the teacher is refusing to start any meeting without Jim’s presence. It makes Leo rip away the PADD with Joanna’s educational details on it, to see where Jim is listed. He is listed as her secondary and equal guardian along with Leo, and it makes Leo throw the PADD onto the table. Joanna isn’t Jim’s daughter, and Jim has no damned right to be involved in Joanna’s life unless he choses. It seems that although originally when he’d got the call Leo was planning to include Jim, it seems that now that he doesn’t, Leo doesn’t really get a choice. The joint guardianship is valid until the end of the next year, according to the PADD, and even then, after that it can only be changed by a Starfleet council. Bloody Ventaxians and their rules. 

Well, at least Leo thinks it was inflicted by the Ventaxians as a part of gaining the guardianship, but then it could have been added by Jim and Leo wouldn’t _actually_ know. 

Since he wasn’t there.

“I’m sorry Doctor, but unless we have the express permission of the captain, we can’t start without him,” the teacher says with a frown, trying to comfort Leo. She’s a soft spoken woman and Joanna doesn’t seem to shy away from her, which is a good thing. It’ll make life a little bit easier if Joanna gets a good ride at school.

When Jim arrives, he avoids looking at Leo, as Leo avoids looking at Jim. Their words are never directed at each other as they discuss Joanna’s education onboard the Enterprise. Leo holds his tongue when they read through Joanna’s records from Ventax II, wanting to send a sarcastic comment about if Leo had anything to do for his daughter, now that both the medical and educational aspects have been ruled out. He holds himself, though, for thirty minutes as they discuss the best coarse of action. 

It ends up being easier to just put Joanna through some testing, so the teacher escorts the girl into another room. Jim and Leo are left alone then, and the uncomfortable silence tells more about the state of their friendship than anything ever could, because Leo has _never_ had an awkward silence with Jim. 

He’s beginning to wonder if they’re going to spend the whole of the waiting time in silence when Jim speaks. His voice is so small that it makes Leo flinch back; he’s caused that, he’s hurt another person. And most of all, he’s hurt Jim in a way that has made the other man curl into himself. 

Leo feels as if his hippocratic oath is on the floor. That, and his ability to be a friend, because Jim may have deserved a berating, but he didn’t deserve what Leo gave him.  

“How come you never told me you had a daughter?”

Leo doesn’t reply straight away. “How come you never told me about Tarsus IV?” 

“How do you know about Tarsus?”

“It’s in _your_ medical file, Jim, and I’m _your_ CMO. Joanna is in _my_ file, and I’m _your_ CMO.”

This seems to be enough of an answer for Jim, as he rises and leaves the office without a backwards glance, Leo’s eyes are trailing behind him. Leo doesn’t get a moment to score his face as the teacher comes back into the room - without Joanna. 

“Excuse me Doctor McCoy, but it may be better if you come back at 17:00 when Joanna has finished the tests.” She shows him towards the doors, not that Leo needs it. He can feel the ghost of where Jim had been walking off a few seconds ago, but he can’t follow the other man; he has responsibilities in sickbay updating the records of Spock and Uhura. Maybe they’ll help him work out what he’s feeling.

Anger.

Frustration.

Guilt.

Self hatred.


	3. Guardian Of (Everybody)

Leo spends a month irrefutably angry. 

For a month, Chapel asks him if he had gotten out of the wrong side of the bed, and for a month, Leo chews her back out for the question. His medical staff are on edge - they’re double checking everything, and the more junior staff are checking with the senior ones more than necessary - and the number of patients coming in with injuries drops dramatically. He’d be glad, if it didn’t mean that he was missing his best friend.

For two people are actively avoiding each other, Leo and Jim end up in the same room, quite a lot. They have a few teacher conferences about Joanna, just trying to work out which class she should be place into - three years higher than she should be for a girl her age - and then their mandatory weekly meetings. And a shadow of their past lunches.

There’s an underlying feeling of guilt that follows Leo around, like a ghost in his shadow. The feeling does escalate until he’s having trouble eating from guilt, but then the self-righteousness smashes back through to the forefront, and Leo remembers why he is angry in the first place. 

He tries to keep his emotions to himself, because he doesn’t want to influence Joanna’s perception of Jim. She’d holding a type of hero-worship for him, and Leo hasn’t decided how he feels about this; he’s glad that she’s taking some role-models on board which aren’t from the media, but he really wishes that it wasn’t Jim Kirk. She seems to know that there was a very strong friendship between her father and her captain, even though she hasn’t seen any, if her probing questions are anything to judge by.

On the other hand, Joanna seems to have developed a fond, if shallow, friendship with Chapel and Uhura. Leo doesn’t feel like leaving Joanna in the care others more than necessary, so he has taken to bringing her to sickbay for the last hour of his shift; she sits with swinging legs in the main bay if there aren’t many patients, shyly asking the head nurse questions or trying to recreate Chapel’s hair style. Sometimes Chapel helps, and when she does, Leo watches fondly.

One time, he let reality slip as Chapel starts to spray some old-fashioned hairspray, hand hovering to protect Joanna’s eyes without actually touching the younger girl. Leo has just popped his head out of his office to protest the dangers of hair spray (“It was banned pre 22nd century for a reason”) and Chapel has flicked him off with a single finger. Leo then let himself dream of a house and a dog and a yard with Joanna and Chapel, which is startling, because Leo has never had any romantic designs on his head nurse. She fits his picture perfectly though, as both a wife, mother and friend; no blurred lines like he had imagined in a future with Jocelyn all those years ago. 

He privately entertained this fantasy for an hour, slightly dazed as he makes his way to the Captain’s ready-room, daughter with teased hair talking animately beside him. He finds that his imaginary future- house is painted in colours of blue and honey-gold, closets full of men’s clothing, pantries with apples and scotch.

And really, it’s just easier to ignore the fact that they were never Chapel’s eyes in that picture. (Always piercing blue.) It breaks though, shattering like a dropped mirror, when he starts heading to the weekly meeting as CMO with the captain. Joanna in his stride, he starts making his way to the bridge, commenting on the puff of Joanna’s hair. He gruffs at Chapel’s decision to indulge Joanna and reminds himself to hand-wash that prehistoric hairspray out of his daughter’s hair tonight. So Leo isn’t as prepared to come face to face with Jim as he’d hoped to be; especially when they physically smash into each other. 

Jim is running when he crashes into Leo, and really, all Leo can do is sigh, because if the Enterprise was in enough trouble that the captain had to be running somewhere, Leo would know. He doesn’t even finish his sentence - “what are you do-” - before he notices that Jim is wearing civvies. 

“Jim!” Joanna squeals, arms jolting out to the side in some kind of happy dance, and Jim bends down to kiss Joanna’s forehead.

“What’s new, baby doll?” Jim inquires, pushing her hair out of her face.

Joanna, blushing, proceeds to relay her whole day to Jim, while the three of them stand in the middle of the hallway.

Leo notices Jim’s heavy breathing first; heavier than normal. Even through all their training and fitness classes during the academy, Leo hasn’t heard Jim breathing like so. It has a sharper edge to it; rougher intake and harder expelling. Jim’s shirt is dark at the man’s armpits and along his spine, and there are beads of sweat rolling down his neck. His arms are flexing, in what Leo assumes is retaliation from a complete stop instead of a gradual one. His legs are slightly shaky, like they’re going to crack under him.

Everything is just wrong. 

Slipping an arm in between Jim’s arm and the side of his chest, Leo pulls the younger man to a standing position, and all he can focus on are the bumps he can feel through the top. “What type of damned idiotic thing you been doin’ now kid?”

“I tried some replicated passionfruit last night,” Jim says sheepishly, and Leo goes through his back-catalogue, and wait - Jim isn’t allergic to passionfruit.

“You had an undocumented allergic reaction to passionfruit, and it’s not in your medical file so you don’t have an antidote in your room, and you didn’t think to come to find, oh, I don’t know, a doctor? Your CMO?” 

Unceremoniously dragging the captain through the corridor and bridge to the ready room, Leo grabs his medkit off Joanna - who had wanted to carry it today - and starts adjusting the dosage in the hypospray.

But as all good medical practitioners know, you shouldn’t just trust the patient’s diagnosis, so Leo just goes to tug Jim’s shirt off for him, fingers grazing along the hem, cold fingers across warm skin, and it takes a second to register that maybe that was a false move. The action may have once been accepted, but Leo doesn’t know where he stands with Jim, as both a friend and a colleague. 

Jim seems to notice this too, and they both seem to ignore the way Jim’s body had unconsciously moved into the contact, arching.

It seems to be most prudent to gesture Joanna out of the room to sit with Uhura, because Joanna doesn’t need to learn a lot of the words he’s about to utter about Jim Kirk. And it gives Jim time to remove his shirt without Leo interrupting.

It’s not like Leo hasn’t seem Jim topless - rather, it’s a scene he has seen a lot. During the academy, and recently when Jim crawls in with sweat dripping nightmares. But now his palms are sweaty and his heart is beating and it feels as if the density of the air is incorrect.

“Downright childish,” Leo says, his voice staying steady, as he inspects the allergic reaction more stringently. He refrains from touching Jim more than is strictly necessary, because he feels so unsettled around the younger man.

With an uncharacteristic softness, Leo administers the hypo with no pain to Jim. Jim’s watching Leo work - the older man can just feel it - and the world isn’t doing Leo any favours when he catches the sight of Jim licking his lips. Little pink tongue, flicking over and over. There’s a blush on Jim’s cheeks, but Leo’s just looking everywhere except Jim that he barely notices it.

Just as Leo makes a move to leave, Jim draws him back with a thumb on his chin. Jim props Leo’s head down, bringing their eyes together, and now Leo can’t help but lick his own lips, hands smashing into the table either side of Jim’s thighs, hypospray forgotten. 

There are trailing hands on Leo’s face now, and he hadn’t realised how unshaven he was until he can feel Jim’s hand against his face - framing his face - and the space between them is disappearing without any conscious though. There are hands on his face and hips, and then Jim’s running his index finger over Leo’s bottom lip and fucking dragging the nail over the soft flesh to pull it forward. And the nail is dragging, and if it keeps dragging like that, it will cut. But Leo has the image of Jim’s finger sliding along the edge of his lips, Jim then sucking the digit clean.

And god, if that hasn’t lashed an internal wave all through Leo’s body, he doesn’t know what ever will.

It all makes sense, then, and Leo knows he’s not alone in his realisation. Leo is sure of this fact because Jim Kirk, idiotic man-boy extraordinaire, decides that of all times in all of existence, now is the time for a teenager-esque make out session. Tongues fucking and lips biting and hands grabbing and all. It would be lovely if Leo wasn’t closer to thirty than twenty and a father. But Leo is both, and now his actions cannot only reflect his own desires; he has another life to care for. 

“I don’t know if we can do this,” Leo says, eyes wet and heart beating out of rhythm, because he does want this, but he doesn’t think he can handle the type of relationship that is bound to come along with Jim Kirk. It would be reckless and fast, even if it would be warm and encompassing. Leo has seen the way Jim loves; in the man’s friendship with Spock, in the grieving of Galia’s death, in the protectiveness of his brother’s death day. In the minute glimpses, however bitter, that Leo has seen of Jim and Mrs Kirk.

Leo knows he couldn’t survive it coming to an end. He knows he couldn’t survive being in it; knowing how encompassing Jim would become, if Leo was allowed to touch and taste. If only Jim had been a few weeks earlier; because now Joanna is engraved in his veins. He needs to know his daughter is safe like he needs to breathe, and Leo knows he’s going to sacrifice that. He also knows that Jim will understand; the part of him that hurts as a child - lost, abandoned, starving - has to understand because Jim is still his best friend, his captain.

His eye lids close, and he brings his hands up to cradle Jim’s face, and Leo is so lost in his own mind and breathing that he doesn’t hear the red alert go off. There’s a whining sound in the background, but nothing is attributed to it until Jim’s pulling him back into reality, putting a top back over his allergic reaction which still hasn’t been treated, and moving towards the bridge door, stepping through - 

They’re both crashing into something before either of them have noticed that the ship has been thrown to the side. Leo just falls to the floor, with minimal pain, and as he tries to steady himself by propping up on his arms, he hears the hissing of a door trying to close. Looking up, Jim’s torso is trapped between the closing door. Leo is vaguely aware of the specifications of the doors; he knows they’re made of carbon fibre, and they can exert in excess of two tonnes of force, if necessary. 

“Spock!” Leo screeches, bring a dishevelled looking vulcan to the door. 

“Captain, Doctor McCoy,” Spock replies with his trademark cold voice. Leo is considering punching the Vulcan in his pointy-eared face because it was not the time for formalities, but Spock catches on quickly, using his strength to pull the door open for long enough that Leo can manoeuvre them both onto the bridge. Jim coughs as Chekov’s voice can be heard on a ship-wide broadcast, and Leo, who had left his medkit in the ready room, has to physically check the captain’s body by hand. Slipping his hand under Jim’s top, he checks that all of the man’s ribs are still intact, considering the door was crushing his ribs. Nothing is broken - luckily - and although Jim is wincing from the associated pain, he doesn’t seem too harmed.

Chapel is comming him back to the sick bay, and Joanna is strapped into somebody’s chair at the back of the bridge. If he wasn’t on a ship in the middle of an attack, and didn’t have a reputation to maintain, the image of Joanna strapped in, scared out of her wits but still strapped in, would make him openly emotional. He hadn’t been there, but somebody had made a conscious effort to make his daughter safe, even at the expense of losing their own seat during an emergency. He suspects that it’s Uhura, but she’s with Chekhov trying to decipher the language of their attackers, to Leo isn’t going to ask her.

“Bones,” somebody says straight into Leo’s ear, and there’s a hand enclosing around the back of his neck.

“Bones, you need to get to sick bay. There are injured. Take Joanna. You’ve got four minutes to get there, because that’s as long as the gravity is going to hold if they keep shooting at us as they currently are. Strap her in there. Use the segregated power source on sick bay.” Jim is unbuckling Joanna from the seat and folding her hand into Leo’s. It takes a few seconds for Leo’s brain to kick back into gear, switching into a mode he only ever uses in emergencies. 

Just as Leo’s about to leave the bridge - three minutes and 48 seconds left - Jim has stopped him and placed another (rather public) kiss to his lips.

But Leo has to leave.

—

With the sick bay’s gravity running on its own power source (an upgrade Leo and Scotty had come up with drunk, and then submitted sober to the Federation), Leo is treating the most serious patients. Chapel has done well in triage, allocating patients to the appropriate doctor or nurse, and sending only the serious, time consuming cases to Leo. 

His mind is only on the patients, with Joanna strapped in his CMO chair. She’s scared, and she needs comfort, but he also knows that he can give that to her after the emergency passes. Now, his oath as a doctor means that he needs to be prioritising where his energy is going, but since she is safe, his first and foremost priority - as a father and a person- is safe. 

His oath as a Starfleet member is becoming a bit obscure though. As CMO, he knows he is technically supposed to be treating the highest members of the crew rather than the most critical. Chapel seems to understand why he isn’t sticking to this regulation, as does all the medical staff; he had made sure that every person on his medical team had served in a civilian hospital at some point in time, so that they understood how life really worked, rather than how the Starfleet handbook handled it. But this concept doesn’t seem to translate to some of the crew members, who are making a ruckus trying to get into Leo’s sterile room, quoting their rank as a reason. Chapel is, of course, having none of this; either kicking them out or sedating them, but that doesn’t mean that it’s quiet. There’s so much noise that he has to isolate himself in his own brain to tune it out, otherwise he may accidentally cut this ensign’s kidney. 

He still hears Joanna’s shriek though. Later, before he loses consciousness from exhaustion, he’ll wonder if he heard it because of her voice, or the words. 

For a second, Leo wonders if Khan is back. (Later he’ll find out that it’s the Suliban, back from the depths of the universe.)

The unconscious captain is brought in on a stretcher. He’s not moving. 

But Leo can’t leave his patient. He can’t decide to give Starfleet’s rules priorities over his medical ones now, just because it would suit him. But even if Jim was dying right now - which he could be, because Leo doesn’t know, Chapel hasn’t said anything yet - he couldn’t leave his patient. 

So he’ll just have to pray that Jim is no more than unconscious.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suliban are a humanoid race primarily mentioned in Star Trek: Enterprise. 
> 
> Originally this was supposed to be a large chapter, but I've decided to split it into two, more manageable sizes.
> 
> Sorry about the tense changes. REALLY looking for a beta. :)


	4. Interlude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Interlude   
> Comments of all types welcome. :)

More and more patients arrive amidst what Leo is thinking is the start of a war, all of them run past Chapel to make sure that everybody is getting the right medical treatment. Leo tries not to watch her - he knows that she’s a competent nurse, and could probably even be a competent doctor - but as she diagnoses and assigns patients correctly, he finds himself able to calm down over his captain’s injuries. In between changing a set of scrubs, Chapel shuffles into the surgery room and gives him a few desperately needed words of reassurance.

Jim is fine - a pretty serious concussion, a few broken ribs and a severe allergic reaction, but other than that, he’s as good as Jim Kirk ever is. “You should be more worried about our attackers,” Chapel explains after sifting through the chatter of the crewmen passing through sick bay.

The ship goes into full blown red-alert then - because somehow they weren’t already at the full extent of red alert - and the security lights signalling that sickbay has been completely segregated from the rest of the ship start flashing. Although Leo is completely aware of this function, he knows that it has never been used. It’s the last line of defence, to save the injured who can’t protect themselves as well as to save medical personnel because apparently ‘stealing doctors’ is actually a thing.

Leo can hear people banging at the doors, along the walls, but even if had the time and strength to, Leo couldn’t open the door. There was no security clearance high enough, no person strong enough to open the doors. The only way would be if the red-alert was off and sickbay had been re-integrated into the rest of the ship.

He has never been so glad that Jim is in sickbay, injured or no, because it means that there isn’t four tonnes of metal and the possibility of space between them.

Well, more space than there already is.

**

The ship has stopped shaking, and the banging on the other side of the bulkheads has stopped. The sounds of weapons fire has disappeared, and red alert has been stood down. Casualty reports are coming in, but they contain more minor injuries rather than life threatening situation.

The computer verifies the time, and thirty two minutes of fighting has come to an end.

Only thirty two minutes for all the destruction.

Leo idly lets himself wonder for a minute if the computer has any copies of the old show M*A*S*H stored, because he could really use a viewing.  
Three major life saving surgeries and a handful of minor ones in thirty two minutes doesn’t seem thorough enough, sounds like there wasn’t enough time so there was sp much room for so many mistakes, so even though it is safe to be rejoined to the ship, it doesn't feel like it's time.

Time flies when you're having fun, eh?

**

Leo has never been a man of violence; he isn’t violent by nature and tries to stir himself away from it. Unless he needs to know, he tries to let himself remain blissfully unaware of the violence happening around him, and it is a tactic that has never worked for him. Leo has an annoying perchance for stumbling across information.

Years ago, before the academy, he had spent three months ignoring the fact that his wife was having an affair with somebody else. He had known for a long time before he accepted it, and if he hadn’t stumbled across a receipt for a suit that didn’t belong to him, he may have spent a lot more time ignoring his knowledge.

In the academy, there was a night that Jim smashed into his room, stone drunk, muttering about how he was a fuck up and would fuck up. How science mustn’t be all that good if the protection failed. At the time, Leo had assumed that Jim was just nervous about sitting second and third year exams at the same time, fucking up a shuttle docking sim. And it made logical sense - Jim Kirk had a track record of exhibiting all of his stress at once under large quantities of alcohol. It wasn’t until the next morning when a report comes across his desk at medical involving a pregnancy that he actually knows.

So in the same spirit, Leo doesn’t go searching for information about the attack, beyond the composition of the weapons used - so that he can treat the wounds correctly - but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t find out. A species called the Suliban attacked them, with advanced weaponry, and somehow made their way onto the ship. They can cloak themselves, which explains why many of the phaser wounds show signs of being from close proximity. But he also finds that before Jim had felt the need to go be all heroic, he had given specific orders to Spock to segregate sick bay at the first sign of trouble in that section.

Coincidentally, he also finds out that Jim hadn’t made the order for professional reasons.

**

Leo tells himself that there’s no medical reason to go and check on Jim because his staff is competent enough in regards to basic concussions and broken ribs but really he’s not telling himself why he can’t go over. He tries not to glance over at Jim across the sickbay, tries to keep his eyes on the readouts on his scanner and his patient, but it’s a testament to really how well Jim is engraved into his bones, because he can’t. He wonders what joke the nurse told to make Jim laugh boisterously, but really he knows that it’s probably that think that Jim Kirk does where his smile makes someone feel like they’re the centre of his world; and it’s really good for crew morale. (He has heard a few stories from Scotty about Jim popping in to see some of the engineering crewman for chats, and then work accuracy rising significantly.)

Joanna appears, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes, in a crumpled clothes. She’d been quite calm during the attack - he was very proud, in a quiet type of way - and in the immediate aftermath she had acted significantly beyond her years. She seemed to understand her father’s position and instead of seeking comfort from him, she only asks his code to the replicator. He finds her later curled up asleep in his chair, with an apple and an empty cup on his desk. It doesn’t look comfortable, but her petit body does curve around the chair in a way that a full grown man would never be able.

Now that she’s awake, she looks a lot less calm than she had - maybe the sleep had been more of a hinder than a benefit. She stretches, cracking her bones. Her eyes focus on Leo and he smiles slightly across the room at her.

“Good morning Jo,” he says, making his way over to here, private proud smile getting stronger. “Is it breakfast time?”

She nods, but before she gets to the small replicator, she notices Jim on the other side of the room. She does her little girlish squeal and launches herself across the room at Jim, landing in his lap. He slightly doubles back before he kisses her forehead. They start conversing in low tones, but all Leo can notice is how happy Joanna and how hard Jim is biting back the pain. The regens should have fixed the ribs by now, and the hypo would have worked well for the concussion.

Leo avoids directly looking at Jim when he marches over with his scanner. He pulls Jim’s hands and arms into the air so that he can get a good scan of Jim’s ribs, and there aren’t any broken ribs, per se. The regens worked perfectly and healed them, but they’ve healed the wrong way, now pushing into Jim’s lungs instead of protecting them.  
Really, his decision to just sedate Jim without telling the man makes the process easier. Besides, as Leo stabs the hypo into Jim’s neck, it will probably save hours of argument and will save further injury.

**

Leo’s not quite sure when he actually loses it. Probably somewhere between watching his daughter manage an emergency without him to watching Jim Kirk unconscious on a biobed (again). But either way, he ends up crumpled in the corner of his office, crying.


	5. Guardian Of (Himself)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> trigger warnings for mentions of death, mental illness, anxiety attacks

Uhura is the first person to find Leo.

She enters the sickbay, covered in a film of soot and dust, and starts chatting to Chapel and Joanna before chatting briefly to some other injured crewmen - presumably from her section - before she actually starts actively looking for Leo. He can faintly hear her call his name from various points around the sickbay, and her tone has turned slightly darker and she's muttering in a language that he can't understand when she finds him. If he was of a correct mental capacity at the time, he'd make the correct assumption that she was talking in this new language to herself so that she could learn it, but he is no where near okay when she finds him, hands clawing around his neck because he can't fucking breathe because he is choking, his mouth is so dry that it's like old fashioned sand paper. The room is closing in on him, and he has to get out, but for the second he let's go of his neck to try and help himself up, his hands slip right against the cool glass of the wall.

He can't even fucking stand up by himself, and when he slips to the floor, he goes down with pooling eyes and clawing, shaking hands. He can't stop the onslaught of tears then, and everything that had been held at bay was let loose.

He doesn't really register Uhura's actions then, and as she activates the privacy feature in the glass - turning it from transparent to solid black - and calls for Chapel, his fingers rip at his neck more verosuiously, his heart beats faster and his cries are deeper.

It's not until his head starts becoming so fuzzy that he can't even hold a single thought that he feels what's going on around him. There are light touches around him; somebody is taking his pulse and temperature in an old fashioned, tech free way, but they're being careful about it, taking extra care to not touch Leo more than need be. (He doesn't know what would happen if somebody full on touched him right now. But it probably wouldn't be pretty.)

When he slightly finds his way into the reality around him, he focuses on the two voices he can hear, and the absence of any other noise - which is really unusual in a sickbay. He can't orientate himself without the hum of all the machines around him, but he can use Chapel's voice. He only knows her within the four walls of sickbay, with her only joining the Enterprise lately and no time to get to know her out of work, and her voice makes him remember that he's in sickbay. With Chapel and Uhura.

"We need to get Jim, ah, the captain," he can hear Uhura say, before she gets rebutted by Chapel. "No, as much as we think it would do good, he needs to be in control of the situation."

One of them is now talking by his ear, asking him if he wants them to comm anyone, and his mind is so stuck on the women's previous conversation and the thought of Jim that all he replies is a meep "yes".

Just as Uhura starts comming the ships captain, Leo comes to some form of his senses, retracting his previous words, because he doesn't need Jim of all people seeing him like this. So Uhura withdraws her request for the captain's presence, and over the comm Jim argues.

"It's fine Jim," Leo finds the will to say, "just a misunderstanding." That doesn't stop the little fucker from making his way down anyway.

+

Leo has calmed down slightly by the that Jim rocks up tapping against the privacy of the shield around Leo's office. At first Leo doesn't respond, and the whole room remains silent even with Chapel and Uhura hovering in the corner of the room.

Looking up, Leo can see by the shadows that Jim is leaning his head against the wall. "Bones, let me in," he says, and when he receives no answer, "I could override this lock in a second."

"But you won't," Leo replies, head heavy against the wall, tongue becoming a dead weight. "I won't," Jim affirms, tone soft. "Not this time." Leo knows what Jim's last words are in reference to, but he's not even sure that this isabout Joanna anymore. He is still angry that Jim snook behind his back, about Jim bringing his baby onto a ship that then got shot at, repetitively, but that's not really the problem anymore.

Jim's fingers tap against the glass, and all he can see is memories of going down to engineering and finding Jim's hand up against Spock's with only glass separating them, and then following the length off Jim's arm to find a dead Jim.

(He knew that there was a chance that the Khan's blood would work, but that still didn't stop Jim from being dead and making his last call Spock.)

That thought makes it hard to breathe again, and Leo's hands are coming up to his throat again, and he's just so tired. He doesn't stop Jim this time, and the boy comes in, dropping to his knees in front of Leo. Leo is so tied up with his legs against his chest and hands around his throat that when Jim goes to touch him, it takes a second before his body can lash out against the contact, slapping Jim's hand away.

"Don't touch me," Leo tries to say, not sure as to if the words come out or not. Probably not, but Jim seems to get the sentiment anyway, body moving away to keep a safe distance.

"Let me help you," Jim says, eyes determined on Leo.

"Fuck off," Leo spit back. He doesn't need Jim's help, he tells himself. He doesn't need anybody's help.

"Bones, why are you doing this to yourself?" Jim asks, using his hands to slowly and openly drag himself closer across the floor to Bones.

"I don't need your help."

"You don't need anybody, do you?"

"I don't need you," Leo replies, and they both know that's a lie. Everybody in the roomknows that that's a lie. Although the actual nature of the relationship between Jim and Leo is unknown, the fact that there is some kind of relationship is undeniable.

Jim doesn't answer, remains uncharacteristically silent and keeps himself at a hover distance away from Leo.

Leo is the first to snap, wanting to reach across and slap some sense into the man child across from him, but apart from his oath as a doctor and consequential guilt stopping him, it's the fact that Jim looks so genuinely worried. Behind Jim's eyes, Leo couldn't see anything other than an encompassing worry. And the jerk would; especially when his ship has just come out of a firefight. Of course he'd look at Leo like nothing else in the world mattered.

"You fucking asshole," he states, voice clear but dressed strongly with his Georgian accent.

Jim looks startled by his statement, but doesn't refute it. So Leo repeats it again. Again Jim says nothing. Leo says it one more time, before Jim breaks their eye contact, looking down to the floor, with a meep, "I know."

"You fucking died," Leo struggles to say, throat tightening in a way that it didn't before. He can breathe now, his hands aren't shaking, but his head is still so misty that he can't stop himself from crying. His head is pounding and the crying doesn't help, but he just can't stop.

Jim presses his hand into Leo's leg, wrapping his fingers around the calf. His fingers begin to slightly massage into Leo's leg, and they keep Leo grounded if nothing else. He doesn't shy away from the contact this time, and when Jim's hands travel up to start loosening Leo's fingers. He massages the blood into the tips of Leo's fingers, moving down each finger in increments of knuckles, and Leo is just repeating himself over and over again: _you fucking died._

The fatigue starts to hit Leo then, and his eyelids start fluttering closed without his permission. He doesn't want to sleep though, he's not actually going to be able to with the hurricane contained inside his head, so he lets Jim give him the hypo that seems to have appeared in the younger boy's hand (courtesy of Chapel, probably.)

The hypo works quickly, due to the miracles of modern medicine, and soon enough his mind is clear enough that it doesn't hurt to think. That doesn't stop him from asking the question that had been floating around since the incident. "Why did you call Spock?" _Instead of me._

Jim doesn't immediately answer, prompting at Leo's body so that Leo is lying on the floor, and Jim quickly removes himself to grab a standard issue blanket and pillow from one of the spare cupboards, draping the blanket over Leo. It won't be comfortable, by any standards, but luckily Jim isn't going to try and force him out of his office. His pride couldn't take it, he didn't need any member of the crew seeing him like this, Joanna included -

"Joanna," Leo says quickly, sitting up with a little groan and a wince. He has forgotten about Joanna, and guilt comes crashing down on him, because he had forgotten his daughter.

Jim shushes him right up. "Uhura took her back to her quarters. She's fines Bones."

Now that he looks around and stops being so rudely self involved, he notices that Uhura and Chapel have cleared out, and there appears to be no trace of either of them beyond the small medkit sitting open on Leo's desk.

He's okay with the idea of Uhura looking after his baby, especially considering that he had been lobbying for her to help him take custody. A bit of girl time would probably do them good, unless Uhura teaches her some secret language. But even if he wanted to go and get his daughter, he couldn't, as his limbs have become dead weight against and around his body.

Jim prompts Leo back down onto the floor again, and Leo has no energy to fight the younger man. After he lets Jim fiddle around with the blanket and lights, Leo is halfway to dream land, but he gets jostled back by the tug of his blanket. The shift of density suggests that Jim is sliding in with him, and Leo opens his eyes to a view of Jim Kirk's face.

Captain or not, heavy with the burden of lives, Jim Kirk is still Jim Kirk. Still as cocky and bitchy as he was that first day, but still as loyal and loving. It reminds Leo of why he didn't stop himself for falling for Jim Kirk, relationship involved or not, and as Jim slips his hand around Leo's hip, he knows they both want it. Jim's eyes still flicker from Leo's lips up to his eyes, his tongue still darts out to lick across his lips, and if either of either of them were to lean over and close the space, it wouldn't be unwelcome.

"Why Spock?" Leo asks again, as determined as he can be in his state.

"How could I say goodbye, when we've only just started saying hello?" Jim replies, and the words start following Leo into the darkness.

+

The darkness is great, but it doesn't last more than four and a half hours. Chapel is shaking him awake, blubbering so quickly that Leo can't catch up. When she passes him a hypo, he gets the message. Hypoing himself, he untangles himself from the nest he'd made with Jim in their sleep (too much of a familiar sight) and automatically reaches for clean scrubs.

The hypo kicks in almost instantly.

He's still CMO aside everything, and he wasn't going to let the patient in bay five die of anything. Not under his watch.

+

Once the surgery was complete, Chapel starts apologising to him. She's telling him that she didn't want to disturb him, but he was the closest, and he might have to detox from the hypo because it's only really used in emergencies to keep doctors standing at an absolute last resort. Leo has only used it once before, and hadn't even used it during the Suliban attack because it isn't great for the immune system, but as he tells her, it was necessary.

He spends a while wondering why she hasn't make any comments about the fact that she woke him up from sleeping with the Captain, but she makes none through their conversation, even when Jim enters shortly after Leo steps out of the contamination shower.

Leo watches, eyes pumped bright by chemicals, as Jim makes his way over, swaying in the same way that a tired man pulls his body. It suddenly strikes Leo that Jim is a tired man too. Tired enough that he sees nothing wrong with wrapping his arms around Leo and popping his head up on Leo's shoulder. Although it may be normal contact for them in their privacy, it's not the kind of behaviour that they overtly show.

Chapel, bless her, doesn't seem startled. When he drags Jim back to his own quarters, he finds out why. There's a message on his PADD, short and sweet:

_It's alright doc. The whole crew already knows._

+

Leo somehow manages to sleep another four hours, even with his body jumped up on chemicals, and it's a testimony to how tired he is that he can sleep through medical grade energisers with applied effort. He tells himself to make a note to send back to Starfleet medical, but forgets, thoughts no where near stable.

He wakes by himself, body coming about in groggy movements and mind a lot sharper than last night. He's glad that Joanna is staying with Uhura, because he doesn't think that Joanna is ready to find her father in bed with a nude captain. His daughter is aware of something, but considering that he doesn't know where they stand - where they have stood for a while now - there is no chance that he'd be able to give a liable explanation to his daughter.

The fact that sharing a bed and waking up together isn't unusual shows a lot, to start with, but the fact that they've never really done anything (beyond that drunk once) shows a lot the other way. Not that this is what Leo needs to be worrying about right now; he needs to check that his daughter is okay.

He removes the arm lying over his waist and places Jim's arms back on the bed, trying not to awaken the other boy, and reaches over for his PADD and comm. He pulls himself out of bed, arm bracing against the wall as he tries to quietly comm Joanna.

"McCoy to Joanna," he says into the device, hoping that she recognises that it's her. He hasn't actually had to comm his daughter directly yet, and he very nearly considered going "Dad to Joanna" but he does have some form of reputation to maintain, or rescue, depending on how much people say of his outburst last night.

Joanna replies almost instantly. "Yeah dad?"

"You okay?"

”I’m good!" She says joyfully, before her voice turns careful. "Are you?"

"As always, Jo," he says, which isn't technically a lie because he hasn't felt okay in a longtime. "What are you doing?"

"Getting ready for class. Miss Uhura and Mr Spock were going to take me to class," Joannasays, and Leo can faintly hear Uhura protest about her name, and a logical huff from Spock.

He asks a few more questions, nothing to deep, aware of the fact that they're on the commwhere anybody could potentially hear it, and signs off when Joanna is about to go to class.

"I thought that school would be closed due to the attack," a voice says from behind Leo,and when he turns, Jim is awake, lying hazardously with bed hair and a sleepy smile.

Leo agrees. "It's good though. Gets them out of their parents hair, lets them help process the attack through communication with peers." It is surprising that Jim didn't know; Leo would haveassumed that he would have needed to sign off on it.

"When the teachers came on board," Jim stars, basically reading Leo's mind, "we came toan agreement where I wouldn't intefear with their lessons or how they decided to run it as a whole. If they wanted to visit parts of the ship, they had to contact the section heads, and apart from shore leave, they were allowed to keep their own times, as best for the children."

Which all makes sense, because Leo remembers being confused as to why class started at 10:30 when traditionally it started at 09:00. As per regulations, they were supposed to start at 09:00, but studies for hundreds of years had shown that a later starting hour would he beneficial for their brains, and only on Jim Kirk's ship would those regulations be carefully ignored.

"But that doesn't matter right now," Jim states firmly.

"The minds of the next generation always matter, Jim," Leo replies profusely.

"You need help," Jim says.

Leo looks offended at that statement. "I do not. Dammit man, I'm a doctor, I do the helping." "We have many well qualified psychologists on board, here to help the crew deal with thewrath of Khan." And Jim is rattling off a list of reasons why Leo should get help, with many a completing argument apart from the fact that there is no chance that Leo will willingly see one. He saw one with Jocelyn, he saw one about his father, and he took the required units when he went to medical school.

"You should see someone," Jim finishes, looking slightly hopeful. 

Leo's answer is concise. "The hell I am."

If the look on Jim's face is anything to go by, it seems that Leo's flat out rejection of the ideawasn't what the younger boy had expected.

"You need to see someone," Jim says more firmly, with his captain, authorial tone on. Ifanything, it just makes Leo laugh, instead of making him feel obliged in any way.

"And how you gonna make me? Jocelyn had our marriage, Ma had Pa's death, and what do you have? If you think rank is gonna help you, you've been eatin' too many of those old fashioned mushrooms."

Jim's eyebrows knit together like when he is thinking really hard, and then after a few seconds, Jim's body changes. His eyes darken and he starts pulling at the blanket wrapped around him, tongue darting out to lick his lips.

"If you come over here and kiss me for the first time sober over this, I swear on my mother's grave that I'll transfer right off this ship," Leo snaps, because for as long as they have been dancing around this issue, now is not the time to address it, or use it as a bargaining chip.

Jim seems to take this threat seriously, but makes no move to deny the thing between them, and begins thinking again. Finally, all he comes up with is "Joanna".

Which is a really fucking big valid point, and Jim knows it. And Jim knows that Leo knows that Jim knows, which is even worse. Leo probably looks like a deer in the headlights, and he grumbles at himself about being cornered.

"Joanna can't have a dead mother and an absent father," Jim says, and before Leo can even argue about being called an absent father, Jim cuts him off. "No, don't. You don't have to get through what happened last night alone, and if you try, you won't just be condemning yourself; you'll be condemning her too." Jim smiles, trying to bring some form of cheer back into the conversation. "Do you think it's safe for her to grow up with a nut job?"

Leo tries to laugh at being called a nut job, but he knows on some level that it's true, and the truth doesn't seem as funny when it's laid out in front of you.

"You can see each one, if you want, to get the feel for them before you pick. And before you start about rumours, they have a confidentially that they have to keep, as well." And Jim is being an annoying little fucker, being all logical and knocking over every problem he was surely going to complain about.

Leo falls into his lounge with a gruff at the idea of being defeated. "That leaves only one damned thing then kid."

Jim perks up, looking interested, getting ready to bust anything Leo might have to say. "What?"

"Yeah, what is exactly what is it."

Jim looked confused, so Leo throws him a bone. "What's going on here? Are we going to keep ignoring it or maybe try and work it out?"

"Oh," Jim gulps, suddenly immersed in playing with the sheet of the bed. "I'm good with just ignoring it."

Leo takes offence at that again. "I beg your pardon."

"I've read the studies Bones. I won't let you project onto this so that it eventually fucks up.I'm not letting you use _this”  -_ he points between them- “ as a an excuse or something to cling onto. I can help you Bones, but I can't do it for you."

Leo is about to make a comment about the fact that Jim is allowed to do it for everybody else, that he walked into that chamber full of radiation to do it for everybody, but he bites his tongue, and they both fall into a silence because Jim is correct. Leo can’t base his life and mental health around a relationship.

Jim gets up out of the bed, pulling the sheet around him and uses his captain's privileges to replicate coffee for them both, and although Leo is angry at Jim for verbally backing him into a corner, angry about Joanna, angry about dying, angry about comming Spock, angry about a lot of things, the atmosphere feels a lot more open than it has been for a long time. Leo has to acknowledge that it's mostly to do with him, though.

It's Jim who breaks the silence. "I didn't comm you," he says softly, eyes meeting Leo's and keeping them, their previous conversation about Spock coming to the forefront, "because I didn't think you needed me to tell you to know that I love you."

Jim scoots off pretty quickly after that, pulling on whatever clothing he can find because walking down the hallway - even if it’s just the hallway for the officers’ quarters - in a sheet isn’t a great plan, leaving Leo's room to go to his own, leaving a slightly gobsmacked man in his midst.

As long as Leo has known Jim, he has never used those three words. Even when he'd caught Jim at the end of a call with his mother, Jim had just signed off with 'bye' and nothing more personal. Leo remembers Jim telling him about the whole Galia incident at the academy, after finding out about her death, and he remembers Jim's self hated because he couldn't say those three words back to her. Jim may not have been in love with her, but he did love her in his own way.

Leo is still trying to get past the fact that Jim has actually used three words to verbalise years of actions, when his door chime goes off. He hastily pulls on the nearest pair of pants andshirt he can find (one of which seems to be Jim's because it's too damned tight) to open the door to Jim again, looking all bright and clean. His hair is wet and as it flops down, it makes Leo wonder about what a young Jim Kirk would have looked like. He makes a mental note to do some digging for pictures when he remembers that a younger Jim Kirk would have been starved.

Jim whisks away any thoughts of Tarsus IV when he breaks Leo's personal space by stepping right into his quarters, biting his lip. Leo barely has any time to process the thought about the lip biting when Jim leans in and kisses him, squarely on the mouth. Jim's lips are slightly familiar, and they remind him of their drunken rendezvous years ago in such detail as ought to be illegal. It makes him want more than he has wanted in a long time, bar seeing his daughter again.

As soon as Jim is in and kissing him, he's out again, and Leo is left standing in his door way, thoroughly kissed.

This won't fix him, he knows that, and he's naive to think otherwise. One confession hasn't fixed him either, although it has made him feel lighter in some way. He knows what happened in sickbay, and he can't let himself ignore the signs anymore, and with or without Jim Kirk by his side, he's still going to have to work out his issues about Jim Kirk. He's still going to have to work out his issues about Nero and Khan, he'll probably still have to nurse Jim through some nightmares here and there, but the thought of doing it with somebody's hand to hold is immeasurable.

+

Uhura and Spock are wearing civvies when Leo finds them, and both of them out of uniform at the same time feels vaguely surreal. The part that does actually feel surreal, is the fact that Joanna is between them as they walk down the hallway, one hand in Uhura's and the other in Spock's. The height differences are so amusing that he wants to take a picture to highlight the little v they are creating, and the fact that Spock is willingly holding hands with someone.

It strikes Leo that he should probably be worried about the Vulcan considering this is the Vulcan equivalent of insane, because Leo is aware of just how intimate the touch actually is, but if he is really bonded with Uhura like all the evidence suggests, it wouldn't be so offensive to Spock, or as intimate.

It’s still downright adorable. It makes Leo wish that he could send Jocelyn a holo-snap.

Quietly observing from behind them, Leo follows the trio all the way down to the mess, a makeshift smile slightly making itself known on Leo’s face. He doesn’t follow them into the mess though, and he breaks out into a whole face smile when he hears Joanna slightly whining about having to have a piece of fruit, when Uhura starts explaining that it’s good for her. He lets himself lean against the wall outside the door, the noise of their conversation drifting, Uhura and Spock winning on the fruit debate. He’s glad that they care, and it’s obvious that Spock does genuinely care too, somehow, as he tries to use logic to explain his opinions and reasonings on the fruit debate to a child. Leo would probably laugh at it if he had more energy, and in reality he’d probably mock Spock with it, but he tells himself, _not this time._

He sighs and throws his head back against the wall, because he knows what this means. This means that he doesn’t have to do this alone. He has more than just Jim, he has Spock and Uhura too, Chapel, and even the rest of the command crew. Scotty and Chekhov and Sulu, too, and it’s time to start trusting people. He trusts them not to lie to him or steal his things, but to trust someone in a way that you know they’ll never hurt you and they’ll never abandon you when the going gets tough is a foreign concept to Leo. It’s something that he’s going to have to learn, whether he wants to or not.

He doesn’t want to go and see someone, but he comms Chapel telling her that he’ll be late over lunch, and she, for once, doesn’t ask. He isn’t worried about Joanna’s safely, and he knows that Uhura and Spock would be forward enough to comm him if they’ve had enough or if something has happened; besides, she looked quite content hanging between them. (Which is great, as long as she doesn’t go through some type of Vulcan phase later on, because that Leo isn’t going to be able to deal with. He probably could deal with an Uhura-like phrase though.) 

Leo is completely aware of where the psychologists are stationed on the ship, but that doesn’t make it an enjoyable walk. He knows what will happen if he goes to these, he knows what things will come up, and he doesn’t want to do it. He hates the fact that he has let himself be cornered into it, but he knows that it would help. Or rather, it should help. And even Jim’s refusal to define their relationship, as annoyed and frustrated as it makes Leo, will help in some way. It’ll mean that Leo won’t lean on Jim the same way he leaned on Jocelyn after his father’s death. Maybe if he hadn’t leant on Jocelyn, maybe if he had actually taken the sessions with his mother seriously, their marriage wouldn’t have dissolved.

But then, maybe it might have.

It’s time for Leo to stop running, so opens the door to the psychologist’s reception area, and he walks through. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mental health is a serious thing guys, and this is my portrayal of my experience with it. It isn't something to be joked about, and I have tried to handle it as well as I could. 
> 
> If you feel as if you would personally like to talk about what is going on with Leo, please feel free to inbox me at tomeugenetorres at tumblr, and remember to take care of yourself. 
> 
> It is okay to seek help if you need it.
> 
> On a lighter note, there are a few references to other series of Star Trek in this part; how many can you find?


End file.
